The Light Bulb

"Copyright Owen Jones 2012 (c)"

By:Owen Jones

My father's mother, all his nine brothers and sisters and he
himself were spiritualists, which has always seemed to me like a western form of Buddhism, although I am sure that
Buddha did not mean his teachings to be for Asians alone anyway.

Spiritualists can be of many creeds and religions, but basically
they all believe in life after death, reincarnation and karma. My paternal grandmother set up a spiritualist church
in Barry on Butrills Road before I was born and it is still going strong to this day.

My paternal grandfather had been a ship's carpenter, who
circumnavigated the globe several times before he retired to finally settle down with his family and establish a
family business as a carpenter. My father, as the youngest boy, became his apprentice.

I never met my grandfather because he died the year that I was
born, but not before he knew that my mother was pregnant. He gave my parents 5/-, which was $1 in 1954, to buy a
teething ring for me and for 'the next one' when he was born. He must have know that he did not have long to
live.

I have been told that he was a heavy drinker, which does not
surprise me about a sailor, and that he preferred pig fat to lean pork. We can all guess what he died of although I
never asked and was never told.

My mother promised to name me after him, which she did. My
grandfather left my Dad a 'lucky' 6d dated 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain, which was a nationwide
celebration to uplift the British people after the devastation of the Second World War. It was in his wallet, which
Mum kept in her sewing basket, so I saw it several times a week.

I often asked about my grandfather and what he was like. One fact
that came out later, when I was much older, was that spiritualism scared him, but then that is not surprising
either as sailors are traditionally a very superstitious lot, or they used to be in the old wooden sailing ships.
They said that sometimes, especially after a few drinks, he would be too frightened to go home, because his wife
was holding a seance.

Anyway, 15-20 years later, when I was 15-20, my Dad started to
open up to me about his father.

My father lived and worked with his father every day, so he knew
him as well as anyone did. He said that his father was indeed frightened by the ideas of spiritualism, because it
followed that if good souls lived on as ghosts, then so did bad ones. It turned out that he did believe in life
after death and reincarnation, but then coming from Anglesey, the home of Welsh Druidism, that was not surprising
either.

He said that he didn't trust himself to be able to judge the good
ones from the bad ones.

Years later again, Dad told me that his father had always taken a
keen interest in me, but that, because he had not yet learned the 'technicalities' of communicating on the lower
Earthly plain in speech, he could only make noises. However, apparently he was keen to let me know when he was
near.

He told my father to tell me that if ever I heard a light bulb
clicking as it does when it cools, but when it has not been in use or long after it is cool and should have stopped
clicking, then it was him saying hello.

I have heard the light bulb clicking many times over the last 30
years and often wonder how long it will take him to learn to speak to me. Or maybe it is just that I cannot
hear.